Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

'Tis in books the chief

Of all perfections, to be plain and brief.

"Twere well with most, if books, that could engage
Their childhood, pleased them at a riper age;
The man approving what had charmed the boy,
Would die at last in comfort, peace, and joy;
And not with curses on his art, who stole

Denham.

Butler.

The gom of truth from his unguarded soul. Cowper, Tiroc. 147.
Books cannot always please, however good;
Minds are not ever craving for their food.

Crabbe, Bor. 24.

I'm strange contradictions; I'm new and I'm old,
I'm often in tatters, and oft decked with gold.
Though I never could read, yet lettered I'm found;
Though blind, I enlighten; though loose, I am bound.
I'm always in black, and I'm always in white;

I am grave and I'm gay, I am heavy and light.

In form too I differ,—I'm thick and I'm thin;

I've no flesh and no bone, yet I'm covered with skin;

I've more points than the compass, more stops than the flute;
I sing without voice, without speaking confute;

I'm English, I'm German, I'm French, and I'm Dutch;
Some love me too fondly, some slight me too much;

I often die soon, though I sometimes live ages,
And no monarch alive has so many pages.

Hannah Moore.

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good;

Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness will grow. Wordsworth, P.T.3.

Our doctor thus, with stuffed sufficiency

Of all omnigenus omnisciency,

Began, (as who would not begin

That had like him so much within ?)

To let it out in books of all sorts,

Folios, quartos, large and small sorts.

'Twas heaven to lounge upon a couch, said Gray,

Moore.

And read new novels on a rainy day. Sprague, Curiosity.

See tomes on tomes, of fancy and of power,

To cheer man's heaviest, warm his holiest hour. Sprague, Curi. A blessing on the printer's art!

Books are the Mentors of the heart.

Mrs. Halc

BOOKS-continued.

BOOKS-BOUNTY.

The burning soul, the burden'd mind

In books alone companions find.

All hail, ye fields, where constant peace attends !
All hail, ye sacred solitary groves!

All hail, ye books, my true, my real friends,
Whose conversation pleases and improves.

The past but lives in words: a thousand ages
Were blank, if books had not evoked their ghosts,
And kept the pale imbodied shades to warn us
From fleshless lips.

57

Mrs. Hale.

Walsh.

Lytton Bulwer.

The printed part, tho' far too large, is less
Than that which, yet unprinted, waits the press.

BORES.

From the Spanish of Yriarte.

O, he's as tedious
As is a tir'd horse, a railing wife;

Worse than a smoky house ;—I had rather live
With cheese and garlic, in a windmill, far,

Than feed on cates, and have him talk to me,

In any summer-house in Christendom. Sh. H. IV. p. i. III. 1.

BORROWING.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,

For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all,-To thine ownself be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. BOUNDS.

There's nothing situate under Heaven's eye,

Sh. Ham. 1. 3.

But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky. Sh. Com. E. 11. 1. BOUNTY-see Benevolence.

'Tis pity, bounty had not eyes behind;

That man might ne'er be wretched for his mind.

Sh. Tim. of A. 11. 1.

What you desire of him, he partly begs
To be desir'd to give. It much would please him
That of his fortunes you would make a staff
To lean upon.

For his bounty,

Sh. Ant. Cleo. III, 2.

There was no winter in 't; an autumn 'twas,
That grew the more by reaping.

He that's liberal

To all alike, may do a good by chance,
But never out of judgment.

Sh. Ant. Cleo. v. 2.

Beaumont & Fletcher, Spa. Cu.

53

BOYHOOD-BRAGGART.

BOYHOOD-see Children.

The whining school-boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

O, 'tis a parlous boy;

Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable;

Sh. As you, II. 7.

He's all the mother's, from the top to toe. Sh. Ric. III. III. L Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?

Byron, Childe Harold, 11. 23,

A little curly-headed good-for-nothing,

And mischief-making monkey from his birth. Byron, D. Juan.

BRAINS.

The times have been

That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools.

Sh. Macb. III. 4.

With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought.

BRAGGART-see Boasting.

Churchill, Ep. to Hogarth.

What art thou? Have not I
An arm as big as thine? a heart as big?

Thy words, I grant, are bigger, for I wear not
My dagger in my mouth.

Who knows himself a braggart,

Let him hear this: for it will come to pass

Sh. Cymb. IV. 2.

That ev'ry braggart shall be found an ass. Sh. All's W. 1v. 3.
Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:

They are but beggars that can count their worth.

I know them, yea,

Sh. Rom. Jul. II. 6.

And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple :
Scrambling, outfacing, fashion-mong'ring boys,
That lie, and cog, and flout, deprave, and slander,
Go antickly, and show outward hideousness,
And speak off half a dozen dangerous words,
How they might hurt their enemies if they durst;
And this is all.

Why, then, the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.

For men, it is reported, dash and vapour
Less on the field of battle than on paper;

Thus, in the history of each dire campaign,

Sh. M. Ado. v. 1,

Sh. Mer. W. 11. 2.

More carnage leads the newspaper than plain. Peter Pindar.

BRAVERY-BRIBES.

BRAVERY-see Courage. Daring.

'Tis not now who's stout and bold?
But who bears hunger best, and cold?
And he's approv'd the most deserving,
Who longest can hold out at starving.
He that is valiant, and dares fight,

59

Butler, Hudibras.

Though drubb'd, can lose no honour by't. Butler, Hudibras
None but the brave deserves the fair. Dryden, Alex. Feast, 1.
How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,

By all their country's wishes blest!
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung.

Collins, Lines in 1746.

His breast with wounds unnumber'd riven,
His back to earth, his face to heaven.

The truly brave,

Byron, Giaour.

When they behold the brave oppress'd with odds,

Are touch'd with a desire to shield or save. Byron, Don Juan.

Fate made me what I am-may make me nothing,-

But either that or nothing must I be;

I will not live degraded.

Byron, Sardanapalus.

The brave man is not he who feels no fear;

For that were stupid and irrational;

But he whose noble soul its fear subdues,

And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from.

BREVITY.

Joanna Baillie.

Since brevity's the soul of wit,

Sh. Ham. II. 2.

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes-
I will be brief.

As 'tis a greater mystery in the art

Of painting, to foreshorten any part,

Than draw it out, so 'tis in books the chief

Of all perfections to be plain and brief.

For brevity is very good,

When we are, or are not, understood. Butler, Hud. 1, 1. 669.

Stop not, unthinking, every friend you meet

To spin your wordy fabric in the street;
While you are emptying your colloquial pack,
The fiend Lumbago jumps upon his back.

BRIBES-BRIBERY.

What! shall one of us,

That struck the foremost man of all this world,
But for supporting robbers ;-shall we now

O. W. Holmes

60

BRIBES-continued.

BRIBES-BROTHERHOOD.

Contaminate our fingers with base bribes ?
And sell the mighty space of our large honour
For so much trash as may be grasped thus ?
I'd rather be a dog, and bay the moon,

Than such a Roman.

Sh. Jul. C. IV. 3.

Dead falls the cause, if once the hand be mute;

But let that speak, the client gets the suit. Herrick, Aph. 275.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold;

Esteem and love were never to be sold. Pope, Essay on Man.
To bribe the mob with brandy, beer, and song,
To put their greasy fists to court addresses,
Full of professions kind, and sweet caresses,
And with a fiddle lead the hogs along.

Sound him with gold;

"T will sink into his venal soul like lead

Peter Pindar.

Into the deep, and bring up slime, and mud,
And ooze, too, from the bottom, as the lead doth
With its greased understratum.

Who thinketh to buy villany with gold,
Shall ever find such faith so bought-so sold.

BRITAIN-see England.

Byron.

Marston Sophonisba.

Let us be back'd with God, and with the seas,
Which he hath given for fence impregnable,
And with their helps only defend ourselves;

In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies. Sh. H. VI. P. 3, IV. I.
Be England what she will,

With all her faults she is my country still. Churchill, Farew.

Be Britain still to Britain true,

Amang oursels united;

For never but by British hands

Maun British wrangs be righted. Burns, Dumfries Volunteers.

Without one friend, above all foes,

Britannia gives the world repose. Cowper, to Sir J. Reynolds.

The sword we dread not: of ourselves secure,

Firm were our strength, our peace and freedom sure.
Let all the world confederate all its powers,

"Be they not back'd by those that should be ours,"
High on his rock shall Britain's Genius stand,
Scatter the crowded hosts, and vindicate the land.

BROTHERHOOD.

Canning, The New Morality.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. Sh. Hen. V. IV. 2,